Pedro de la Rosa articles on F1 Fanatic archive

Fernando Alonso lost the lead at the start of the Italian Grand Prix but recovered to win from Jenson Button. Button finished second ahead of Felipe Massa. But team mate Lewis Hamilton’s title hopes suffered a blow when he crashed out on the first lap.

The home crowd got a near-perfect result in qualifying at Monza as Ferrari took first and third on the grid for tomorrow’s race. Take a look back at the cars in action during today’s qualifying and final practice session in the picture collection below.

Fernando Alonso will start from pole position for Ferrari in tomorrow’s Italian Grand Prix. With Jenson Button taking second place for McLaren there is no Red Bull on the front row for the first time this year. Felipe Massa took third place ahead of Mark Webber.

Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time in the final practice session for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. But Red Bull and Ferrari showed strong pace with Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa all lapping within two tenths of a second of Hamilton.

There may have been just five hundredths of a second between Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button’s lap times in second practice – but Hamilton’s car was almost 12kph faster in a straight line. Encouragingly, the top three teams are very evenly matched – their best ultimate laps covered by just 0.076 seconds. Here’s the data […]

The cars sported a range of different aerodynamic packages in practice today. Some used conventional shallow Monza wings, some used normal shaped wings and several experimented with whether or not to use their F-ducts. Have a look at who was trying what in the pictures from today’s practice sessions below.

Sebastian Vettel was fastest in the second practice session at Monza. He pipped Fernando Alonso by seven hundredths of a second and Felipe Massa underlined Ferrari’s pace with the third fastest time. Massa had been poised to improve his time before going off at the exit of the Parabolica at speed.